Despite promise, US govt moves to classify justification for drone killing of American

The Obama administration has launched a sudden effort to keep classified additional parts of a memo outlining the legal justification for the drone killing of an American a mere week after saying it would comply with a federal ruling to release the memo.

In January 2013, a
Federal District Court judge decided that the US Justice
Department could keep the document classified entirely. That
ruling stood until April 2014, when a panel of the US Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York ordered the government
to publicize key parts of the document that provided the legal
rationale for the drone strike that killed Anwar
al-Awlaki.

Awlaki was born in New Mexico before moving to Yemen with his
family as a child. He returned to the US again to attend college
but eventually became a prominent Al-Qaeda propagandist who
American intelligence officials have claimed helped plot
terrorist attacks. He was killed by a September 2011 drone strike
in Yemen that was authorized based on the 41-page memo, dated
July 16, 2010.

President Barack Obama praised the strike at the time, telling
reporters that Awlaki’s death was a “major blow to Al-Qaeda’s
most active operational affiliate.”

The New York Times and American Civil Liberties Union have sought
the release of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act.

It has been an issue of contention of late because David Barron,
the former Justice Department attorney who wrote the memo, was
confirmed by the US Senate by a narrow vote last week as a judge
on a US appeals court. A number of senators said they would only
vote to confirm Barron if the administration agreed not to appeal
the April decision and release a redacted version of the
document.

“I rise today to oppose the nomination of anyone who would
argue that the president has the power to kill an American
citizen not involved in combat and without a trial,” Senator
Rand Paul said last week. “It is hard to argue for the trials
for traitors and people who would wish to harm our fellow
Americans. But a mature freedom defends the defenseless, allows
trials for the guilty, and protects even speech of the most
despicable nature.”

In a new court filing obtained by The New York Times, however, assistant US
attorney Sarah Normand now argues that some of the information
the administration pledged to reveal should actually remain
secret.

“Some of the information appears to have been ordered
disclosed based on inadvertence or mistake, or is subject is
distinct exemption claims or other legal protections that have
never been judicially considered,” she wrote.

The Justice Department also asked that the court keep the request
for parts of the memo to remain secret. That request was denied,
with the judge ordering the government to unveil previously
secret negotiations between the court and prosecutions
deliberating which aspects of the Barron memo would remain in the
dark.

“It’s deeply disappointing to see the latest effort by the
government to delay even further the release of this memo to the
public,” New York Times attorney David McCraw told Politico. “The government reviewed the
Second Circuit’s opinion before it was released. The court made
redactions in response to that review. The fact that the
government then waited five weeks to file a motion – seeking yet
another opportunity to review what it has already reviewed – says
volumes about the administration’s position on
transparency.”

Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado) was one of the lawmakers who said
he only voted to confirm Barron because of the administration’s
promise that “redactions to the memo would focus on
still-classified information – not the legal reasoning
itself,” he told the Times.